


Nail Polish

by orphan_account



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:25:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after CoA, Isabelle and Clary have been talking more and more while Clary avoids Simon and Jace. Isabelle's ice is melting, Clary needs her war paint, and ladies find themselves needing one another. Clary/Izzy</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nail Polish

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the lovely ellenpxge on tumblr who requested this. Want a fic? Hit up michaelgayland.tumblr.com

Isabelle didn’t like other girls. At least, she hadn’t. Other girls would break her brother’s hearts or steal anything she earned. Isabelle Lightwood was a one-woman show.

And yet, for the third time this week, she had no energy left to put up a wall of ice while Clary played music on her bed, while the girl sang along to a song Isabelle didn’t know, and while she avoided Jace and Simon and going to the hospital. No, somehow, Isabelle was in absolutely no hurry to go back to being a one-woman show again. Her mother had said she couldn’t trust men, so her daughter didn’t. Isabelle herself had spent too long not trusting women. She was Jace’s sister, in that respect. Alec, Alec could throw his heart at someone, get it stomped on, and still have faith in people. Her sweet brother was either far sillier than her, or far more brave.

Isabelle retouched the makeup she wore like armor, and it wasn’t until she had her wings painted, sharpened seraph blades at either side of her head, that she noticed Clary had stopped singing, though the song played on.

"Clary?"

"Mmm?" Clary sat up, green eyes landing on Isabelle. Green had evoked the green monster, a demon called Invidia sent to swallow Isabelle whole when those two eyes first opened to look at her, and even more ferociously when they looked at Jace. And now, Isabelle couldn’t help saying the nursery rhyme her father had taught her as a child to herself when Clary looked at her.

_Green will mend out broken hearts._

"Are you all right?" Isabelle played with the necklace she’d tossed on that morning, looking at it, rather than at Clary. At least her necklace didn’t make her heart do dangerous flutters, threatening to fly about and bruise her ribs until it eventually escaped. That was more dangerous than throwing one’s heart away, like Alec did. When the heart escaped on its own, Isabelle would be powerless to get it back, to retrieve it, to say where it went.

"Mph," Clary shrugged, leaning back against Isabelle’s pillows, which she kept quite nicely aligned that day, which Clary now messed and disarrayed with her body and her red shock of hair.

Isabelle lived among too many passive-aggressors and people of few words to know anything other than the ambiguous answer a grumble may mean. 

"Is it Jace?" She suggested, turning back to her vanity, to the pots of glitter and makeup and things she had bought on a whim to make herself feel better and never once had a use for. 

"Not really." Clary shook her head, propping herself up on her elbows. So figety, today, her companion couldn’t help but to notice. "I can’t say I’ve been thinking about Jace nearly as much as usual. Which I guess," she took a pause and a breath, "I guess that’s a good thing."

"Forgetting about boys generally is," Isabelle nodded, watching Clary from her mirror, separating them like Shallot and Lancelot, though the distance Isabelle would have to turn was a great deal smaller than Shallot’s, should she want her blood to freeze and die all for a heart’s want. She stayed in shadows, no matter how sick they may make her.

"That doesn’t really change much else, though," Clary had been smiling for a moment, and Izzy had caught her eye in the mirror, hoping Clary wouldn’t notice her own smile. That faded, though, into Clary looking far away, at something Isabelle couldn’t see or touch or smack away from the other girl. It was fast growing to be a feeling she absolutely hated, not being able to be what Clary needed.

"Not Valentine, or my Mom, or the fact that I can barely fight." Clary pulled a pillow to her chest, burying her chin inside it.

The rhyme, while causing a great deal of unwanted heartache, still repeated in her mind, as though some inner child were singing it to her and to Clary. 

Her father may have taught it to her, but her mother had given it meaning. Isabelle’s first hunt, Maryse Lightwood had asked her to recall the first line of it.  _Black for Hunting Through The Night,_ she had been an echo of it, hollow but dutiful, like any child reciting a rhyme. Maryse had told her daughter, while she plaited her hair that those colors could give her strength, that she could paint her clothes and face with the colors of the Angel to give her spirit a grounding.

Maryse had painted Isabelle’s nails black before her daughter was set out on her first hunt with her brothers, and Isabelle felt, somehow, as though she had more armor than simply gear on. Perhaps Clary could be comforted the same way.

"I know it’s not much. But I might have something to calm you, just a bit." She smirked to bite back a moment of embarrassment as she searched the vanity, finding the bottle she needed. "It’s a silly old thing, but something that’s always worked for me."

"What is it?"

Isabelle turned back, before she answered, and grabbed a second bottle. A green one. Alternating colors weren’t so atrocious, certainly not when they meant something.

"There’s an old rhyme that Shadowhunter children learn. One about what different colors mean to us. Er, you wouldn’t know it. Is it all right if I explain?"

"Sure," Clary sat up, looking puzzled as Isabelle approached the bed.

"Black for hunting through the night,  
For Death and Mourning, the colour’s white,  
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown  
And red to call the enchantment down,  
White silk when our bodies burn,  
Blue banners when the lost return,  
Flame for the birth of a nephilim  
And to wash away our sins.  
Gray for knowledge best untold,  
Bone for those who don’t grow old.  
Saffron lights the victory march,  
Green will mend our broken hearts,  
Silver for the demon towers  
And bronze to summon the wicked powers.”  
  
"So," Clary frowned, "What exactly for all that mean?"

"I’m getting to that," Isabelle chided, scoldingly and lifting the two bottles of paint, gleaming. "My first hunt, my mother told me that to paint yourself with the colors of the Angel can give you strength where you need it. She painted my nails black. And, now, I thought two colors might be the thing you need."

Clary looked down, seeing Isabelle’s long, sharpened nails painted a fine green for the moment, and thought back. For a moment, she said nothing and Isabelle feared she’d let herself be full of sentiment all for a waste. Then, finally, the little redhead spoke.

"Thanks." She smiled, a little unsure, and her face slightly flushed in a way that made Isabelle’s heart resume its deadly flutters. They were far too free, too independent now, for the heart’s mistress to trust them.

Isabelle painted Clary’s nails, first the black, then the green, and then ordered the smaller girl to sit still as they dried. Her back as turned again when Clary asked her a question. She kept her eyes on Clary’s face all the while; she watched the way her lips curled when she smiled, the way she’d awkwardly chirp conversation that Isabelle was too focussed and proud to carry, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. 

"Izzy?"

"Mmm?" She liked that Clary had taken to call her Izzy. It made the fluttering heart worse, more painful as it was contained but by now, Isabelle was beginning to like it, damning the pain and worry.

"Why are your nails green, too?"

She smiled. “To prevent my heart from being broken. I’ve seen too much of it, lately.” She turned back to Clary.

"I’m pretty tired of broken hearts, myself," she nodded.

Isabelle threw herself down at Clary’s side, and their arms touched. Clary’s arm should have been warm, surely, but not scorching as Isabelle swore in that moment, it was. “And boys,” She added. “Fuck boys.”

"Or rather, don’t," Clary agreed with a small laugh, and a look on her face that was extremely pleased with herself. 

"I’m finding that girls are infinitely better in every conceivable way, lately. Aren’t you?" This was a shameless test of the water, she swore. But hell, Clary was prettier than even half the faerie boys Izzy had dated, and that should not have been a thing possible.

"Yeah." She nodded, speaking more freely, and smiling though she blushed. "Better at…. mending hearts, too."

"Maybe better at breaking them," The flash of green eyes stayed more than a flash as Izzy held eye contact, as she leaned forward, just enough to look like a natural shift for comfort. "I might let one break mine, so long as it was worth it."

"Why would she do that?" Clary’s tone changed, and she turned, facing Isabelle more fully now.

"Hearts are breakable. She might not have to try."

"She would try pretty hard not to?"

"Would she?"

"Mhm."

And, in a moment, Isabelle made a decision as sharp and quick as a snap of her whip, and she was kissing Clary Fray. She had pressed her lips to the other girl’s mouth, she had cupped the back of Clary’s neck with her hand, and her heart flew out of her chest before Isabelle dared having a thought of wanting it back.

They were both panting a bit, when she pulled away, both girls hit by a force bigger than Isabelle had ever known a kiss between two people to have.

"Well," said Clary, still starry-eyed but clearly less dazed than Isabelle, who was still too sticken and shocked for speech. "If you’ll let me, Izzy, I’ll try not to break your heart."

"Yeah." Isabelle swallowed, nodding. "I’ll let you."

Clary leaned into her, head on the crook of Isabelle’s shoulder, and nuzzled slightly.

Maybe, perhaps, Isabelle could trust her heart, when it flew away to a woman’s hold.


End file.
